Moneyland

This compilation brilliantly blends old country-folk recordings with contemporary crooners to build on a concept that compares the pastoral people who struggled during the Great Depression and the parallel plights of modern farmers and rural families who are similarly striving to survive today. Early recordings of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "fireside chats" bookend Moneyland, but it's the scratchy "Breadline Blues 1932" by Bernard "Slim" Smith that sets the tone with the antiquated crackles and pops of an old 78 rpm platter sounding like it's playing out of an old Victrola gramophone. Del McCoury follows it up with the title track showcasing his band's bluegrass pickin' prowess and McCoury's nasal toned inflections wailing about the root of all evil over an acoustic steam engine of fiddle, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, and flat-picked guitar. Marty Stuart and Merle Haggard come together on "Farmer's Blues," a weepy, waltzing, country song with melancholic pedal steel notes and bluesy yodeling. Emmylou Harris provides a drop dead gorgeous song in "Mama's Hungry Eyes," a modern Americana ballad with Rodney Crowell singing harmonies on the choruses. The narrative here is almost as harrowing as the last chapter in Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath.